More operators inside `is(...)` expressions

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 9/1/20 2:36 PM, Ogi wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 14:00:19 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> But Walter is never going to approve any changes here, as this is one 
>> area where he will not budge, due to past experience with the C 
>> Preprocessor abuse. So this discussion is only academic. Just use the 
>> workarounds and move on.
> 
> Whoever would do horrible deeds with `version` is still able to do all 
> of them with `static if`, meanwhile the good guys are stuck with this 
> wooden syntax. Seems a bit irrational to me.
> 
> I feel like beating a dead horse. Surely it has been discussed ad 
> infinitum. And after all, it’s not such a big deal, it’s not like you 
> have to juggle versions in your code all the time. But things like that 
> are no good for D’s public image.

Well I can tell that I don't mind the limitations of version at all, and 
I enjoy the distinction. There are many features in a programming 
language that are more powerful than others and could supplant them 
(foreach/for/while/goto, overloading/templates, switch/if etc).

Economy of means is an underrated principle of writing code (and in 
general). So if I'm in a place where version would fit, version it is. 
Otherwise I decide, for a reason, that static if is to be reached for. 
All of that would be hardly irrational.